It is some time since I last heard Handel's Serse,
an endearing work with its mixture of comic and serious elements and
its refusal to follow conventional structural obligations. Paul
McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort, occasionally out of sorts, never
lost track of the fact that this is theatrical music. Susan Bickley
in the title role coped magnificently with the difficult music,
expressive in lament, not forgetting the comic aspect of the opening
"Largo", and showing control over a more than two-octave
range of which the composer explores every corner. Brian Asawa, the
heldencountertenor, left a large public open-mouthed in the role of
Arsamenes as he outsang Hilary Summers's Amastre at every
opportunity, her miniscule, colorless voice, sounding more like a
countertenor than Asawa himself. Sandrine Piau and Alison Hagley as
the rival sisters were nicely contrasted, but Piau would do us all a
big favor if she were to relax just a tiny bit. Christopher Purves
made the most of his comic opportunities, occasionally to the
detriment of intonation, while Stephen Richardson held the fort in
his two arias and the occasional ensemble. A worthy close to this
year's Festival.

26 July - Montpellier

Occasionally critics are allowed to enjoy
themselves, and it is for such occasions as the rediscovery of
Ernest Bloch's Macbeth that we are almost prepared to
forgive René Koering for his annual act of self-indulgence
(see 16 July). Bloch's misfortune is that Verdi's opera, totally
forgotten in 1910 when this version was premiered, has since taken
over, and as we seem to find it difficult to put up with more than
one opera on the same theme it has gone the way of Leoncavallo's
Boheme, Paisiello's Barber of Seville, etc. Only
Massenet and Puccini seem able to coexist. This is magnificent music
by a 24-year-old composer, somewhat influenced by Debussy and Wagner
but still capable of finding his own voice. Friedemann Layer and the
Orchestre Philharmonique de Montpellier played at an
adrenaline-inspired level, while Jean-Philippe Lafont and Markella
Hatziano in the leading roles took advantage of every opportunity in
parts written with little consideration for human capacity. Macbeth
is almost constantly onstage, while Lady Macbeth's role is written
over a wide range, from high notes that have to pop out of nowhere
to contralto low notes. Both singers were totally engaged, and while
Hatziano's French may not be perfect her comprehension is. A
libretto by Edmond Fleg gives us the Porter's scene, here humorously
(gallows sort) by Marcel Vanaud, while the three Witches are far
more atmospheric than the generalized chorus used by Verdi.

21-24 July - Home

Listening to Richard Strauss's Guntram on
the radio, live from Montpellier, I am struck by the apprenticelike
traits of the piece: the tenor writing is ferociously and
unremittingly heroic and Gary Lakes did more than his best to
surmount the difficulties and the tessitura of the title role. Susan
Anthony's laser-like soprano seemed to have little problem with a
role written for the future Frau Strauss. Christoph Perick and the
Orchestre National de France sail through the score, only
occasionally at odds with one another. Rain prevents me from going
to Fourvière for the Orchestre National de Lyon performing
Mahler's 2nd under Eliahu Inbal. I decide to listen to the new
Philips recording of Verdi's first opera, Oberto (454
472-2). Despite individual points of excellence in the first two
recorded versions of the opera (Bergonzi on Orfeo, for example), Sir
Neville Marriner leads what is now the version of choice. Far from
subtle, Oberto benefits from a lighter Donizettian approach
than is customary in Verdi performances. The major surprise is Maria
Guleghina as the first of Verdi's Leonoras, her leather-lunged
approach in live performances to the roles of Abigaille and Lady
Macbeth leaving us totally unprepared for the almost delicate touch
she applies here. Violeta Urmana offers more pleasure, her mezzo
voice absolutely even over its entire range, never forced and always
musical, yet finding sufficient means to create emotion when
necessary. Samuel Ramey is still able to muster sufficient power for
the title role, the only member of the cast to supply decorations
for the second verse of his cabaletta. Only Stuart Neill's Riccardo
disappoints in this company, his unsubtle approach detracting from
his only acceptable vocalism. Placing us further in their debt,
Philips includes three numbers Verdi placed in an appendix to his
score, a duet for the two women, and a new aria for Cuniza (the
mezzo) plus a much improved version of her duet with Riccardo. And
thank you as well for having the courage to cast outside the usual
channels for singers rather than obeying what is too often the
automatic gesture of calling in Cheryl Studer. Once again Actes Sud
has produced a fascinating monograph, Claude Debussy: La
musique et le mouvant by Jean-François Gautier. The title
is virtually untranslatable, "Music and self-transformation"
being a possibility. Gautier takes pains to demonstrate Debussy's
links to Palestrina, Bach and Couperin and at the same time points
out that the modernists' adoption of Debussy may be misplaced. The
discussion of Jeux is enlightening in this respect. Early
on, we are told (in my own inadequate translation): "The only
revolution initiated by Debussy in his lifetime consisted of a
reversal of conventional points of view; to compose, certainly, not
at a distance or hiding from technical aspects, but as a total
person. All the rest, the harmonic and structural upsets that caused
so much ink to flow, was nothing but the practical consequence of
this essentially poetic stance." Highly recommended.

19-20 July - Beaune

The 15th annual Baroque Music Festival offers
much of interest to lovers of vocal music, and also serves as
testing grounds for recording projects. Christophe Rousset and Les
Talens Lyriques served up Traetta's Antigona, heard
previously in the 20th century only in 1962. Antigona dates
from 1772 and shows that Gluck was not the only reform composer of
his time, Traetta offering major building blocks rather than single
numbers. A well-chosen cast lived its way through the work, Maria
Bayo in the title role projecting at 200 percent all evening. The
soft-grained soprano of Anna-Maria Panzarella offered an interesting
contrast while the luscious contralto of Laura Polverelli in the
castrato role gave total pleasure. Gilles Ragon may occasionally be
too emphatic in his utterances, but again the contrast with the more
mellifluous Carlo Allemano was instructive. Oiseau-Lyre immediately
set to work following the concert. Rousset's appearance last year at
Beaune with Handel's Rinaldo was not recorded for reasons of
contractual constraints (Bartoli and Hogwood have already reserved
the work), but Mondonville's Fêtes de Paphos
(Oiseau-Lyre 455 084-2, three cds) were given the honors of a
recording. A performance at Versailles was followed by studio
sessions with the same effective cast, but it is difficult to
convince us of more than a surface interest, the music lacking the
depth which the composer's contemporaries were able to supply. On
its own terms, the work is charming and the talents of Sandrine
Piau, Véronique Gens and Agnès Mellon (the last much
helped by the microphones) are matched by the matchless Jean-Paul
Fouchécourt. Olivier Lallouette outshines Peter Harvey in the
baritone range, while Rousset is his usual ebullient self.
Eduardo
Lopez-Banzo and Al Ayre Español have been giving
concerts since 1988 and are under contract to Deutsche Harmonia
Mundi which has struck gold with all three recordings so far issued.
Antonio de Literes, a prolific composer at the start of the 18th
century, supplied much sacred and secular music for the court and
the aristocracy. Los Elementos was receiving its first
performance since its creation in 1704 or 5. An allegorical
interlude, subtitled Opera armonica al estilo ytaliano,
there are five soprano roles (here sung by four sopranos) plus a
solo baritone and a countertenor for the ensemble sections. The
music is long on charm if short on characterization but the
foretaste of what the composer is capable - as demonstrated in
excerpts from Azis y Galatea in Volume 2 of their series of
recordings - whets the appetite for next summer.

17 July - Lyons

An all-Gershwin concert with the Orchestre
National de Lyon under Emmanuel Krivine, featured Roberta Alexander
in excerpts from Porgy and Bess and Leon Bates in Rhapsody
in Blue. The orchestra remains one of France's hidden treasures,
playing with a cohesion that its Parisian rivals should envy. Ms.
Alexander gave an object lesson in how this music should be sung,
indicating but not stressing the ethnic roots. Bates, however, is an
enigma - I haven't heard so many wrong notes from a professional in
a long time, while his encore of the Variations on I Got Rhythm was
anything but rhythmic. Encores were a Kosma arrangement of that old
Glenn Miller favorite, In the Mood, and a rhapsodic version of
Ravel's Bolero. A pleasant evening at the Roman Theater at Fourvières,
made even more pleasant as a result of the acoustic shell which was
especially efficacious.

16 July - Montpellier

Oscar Straus's Lustige Nibelungen fell
victim this year to René Koering's annual act of
self-indulgence. Koering translated, adapted and staged a piece
called Ces Sacrés Nibelungen! in what was presumably
meant to be an amusing fashion, but which forgot that in order for a
parody to be funny the performers must be dead serious. It is
interesting to note that while screaming for additional funds, Radio
France finds the money to support such futilities each summer.
Enrique Diemecke and the Orchestre de Montpellier tried to find the
core but the lack of fusion with the onstage activities made this
impossible. What a waste of the talents of Françoise Pollet
and a much-slimmed-down Michèle Lagrange.

8-14 July - Home

Anne Sofie Von Otter scores again with her
newest album of opera arias from the classical age - Gluck, Haydn,
Mozart - conducted by Trevor Pinnock (Archiv 449 206-2). After other
recent and equally flawless discs devoted to Mahler-Zemlinsky or
Swedish songs, Von Otter returns to a period which also suits her to
perfection. In the two longest selections on the disc - from Lucio
Silla and Clemenza di Tito - it is the recitatives which
are especially striking for the dramatic urgency conveyed, while the
flawless musicality brought to the arias themselves is breathtaking.
It is also in the recitative to Elvira's aria that all charges of
coldness often attributed to this performer are laid to rest. But
what a range of characters - Cherubino, Elvira, Zerlina, Vitellia
and others by Mozart, Orfeo and Alceste by Gluck, not to mention
Haydn - in this portrait gallery, only Haydn's Alcina is a bit over
the top as Von Otter tries to bring out the humor in a role which
does not really have any. But this is a minor flaw. Pinnock and The
English Concert are as enthusiastic as the singer they accompany,
offering stylish playing, especially in the many obbligato lines.
Inva Mula's participation in The Fifth Element aroused my
curiosity, so I went to the movies, not expecting much from Luc
Besson, but I had a great time. The sheer excess, operatic if you
will, immediately caught my attention, from the costumes to Bruce
Willis's offhand reactions to the events around him. But what a
surprise to hear the voice that emerged in a portion of Lucia's Mad
Scene, confirming the impression of a few weeks ago in Colmar.

4-7 July - Colmar

Following a tradition of dedicating each year's
festival to a performing artist, the 9th Festival International de
Colmar was an Hommage to Pablo Casals, with no fewer than 13
cellists participating as soloists, not to mention various chamber
music ensembles. The moving force behind the festival is violinist
Vladimir Spivakov, directing a chamber orchestra, his Virtuoses de
Moscou. The programs were fascinating, most of the cello playing
superb, but Spivakov's talents as a conductor leave much to be
desired - and one of my colleagues confided that Spivakov has
improved significantly in the last few years. Unforgettable is the
only word applicable to Mischa Maisky in Shostakovich's First Cello
Concerto on the opening night of the festival, visibly experiencing
his emotions, wearing an outfit which would not have looked out of
place in Star Trek. But what playing. Sonia Wieder-Atherton
and Raphaël Oleg's lunchtime chamber concert the next day
featured what may be the only two works written for violin and
cello, the Duos by Kodaly and Ravel. Stephen Isserlis may be devoted
to the music of his contemporaries, but that seems little reason to
inflict the inanities of John Tavener's Eternal Memory on an
audience, particularly when followed by a useless orchestral
transcription of Bloch's From Jewish Life. Antonio Meneses
rescued the second evening with his pointed playing of Haydn's D
major concerto, after the orchestra had gummed its way through
Roussel's Sinfonietta and Haydn's 85th Symphony. Peter Wispelwey's
renditions of two Vivaldi concerti on the third evening seemed
totally out of sync with the orchestra's unstylish playing, while
Mikhaïl Milman, first cellist of the orchestra, was clearly
having an off night. And then Inva Mula arrived on stage to sing
four Mozart arias, including one of my all-time favorites, K. 418, "Vorrei
spiegarvi", elegantly dispatched despite one forgivably
ungainly swoop over more than two octaves. And then I returned home,
missing a great many concerts which were certainly enticing,
including Casals' oratorio El Pessebre played by Michel
Plasson and the Orchestre de Toulouse. The city of Colmar remains a
marvel, with its lovingly maintained city center, its museum which
houses the Isenheim altarpiece familiar to devotees of Hindemith's
Mathis der Maler and the warm reception accorded to visitors.